In Sweden, don't mess with a drunk moose on the looseSun Nov 7, 3:22 PM ET

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A drunk moose staggering through your backyard and nibbling on apples fallen from your tree may sound like an amusing anecdote to tell your friends, but for those Swedes who each autumn come face to face with the angry beasts, it's no laughing matter.An encounter with an intoxicated moose can, as strange as it might seem, leave your living room in a shambles and leave you battered and bruised if not dead.Some 300,000 moose, or elk as they're known in Europe, roam Sweden's woods. But every autumn at least a few of the normally timid animals end up astray, trudging out of the woods and into cities and suburbs where they gladly munch on fermented apples that have fallen from trees.The result is an intoxicated and aggressive brute.A large hulking beast, the moose is dark brown with massive shoulders, shovel-shaped rounded antlers, and a long muzzle and short goatee. It can easily weigh up to 500 kilos (1,000 pounds), yet it roams the forest on awkwardly long, slender legs.Traffic accidents with moose are well-documented: there were 4,204 of the animals killed on Swedish roads in 2003, to be exact.Less documented, but no less terrifying, are the reports of drunken moose jumping through living room windows, bellyflopping into empty swimming pools or violently attacking people.

"There are a few such incidents every year," Henrik Falk of the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management told AFP.

"Moose are not normally aggressive, they're usually very shy of people. But once they're intoxicated, they lose their inhibitions. And if they feel threatened they can become very aggressive," Falk said.He recommended that people should at all costs try to avoid coming into contact with a moose.

Pero estabamos platciacndo de elefantes (huesos y arena)!!

It is an enduring image of the South African bush: elephants staggering across the veldt after gorging themselves on the delectable marula fruit, which ferments into an alcohol that sends the great beasts reeling.

"Intoxication would minimally require that the elephant avoids drinking water, consumes a diet of only marula fruit at a rate of at least 400% normal maximum food intake, and with a mean alcohol content of at least 3%," write the authors.

The authors acknowledge that the massive mammals have a taste for alcohol. They just dispute the widely held notion that the marula fruit goes to their head.

"Elephants indisputably like booze, especially Asian elephants where we have many reports of them getting into rice-wine stores and drinking the stuff," says lead author Dr Steve Morris.

But Morris also says that reported "tipsy" behaviour in elephants and other animals may stem from some other intoxicant besides alcohol.